Vice-President Zuma, who faces corruption charges, is the unlikely hero of the left

Two groups of armed men squared up to each other outside former Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s house in Johannesburg’s wealthy Forest Town suburb on 18 August. One was a team from the ‘Scorpions’ (the National Prosecuting Authority), busy searching Zuma’s house; the other group comprised his bodyguards from the Presidential Protection Unit, who raced to the spot to confront the Scorpions. After a few tense minutes with guns cocked, the Zuma-loyalists backed down. The odds are that, in the bigger political and judicial battles ahead, Zuma’s people will again have to retreat.

The battle between Zuma’s supporters and President Thabo Mbeki’s revolves around central issues – economic policy, the credibility of the judiciary and constitution, and the integrity of the governing African National Congress. Zuma’s trial for fraud and corruption opens on 11 October. Meanwhile, sentiment swings wildly back and forth. Zuma remains popular not only with many of his fellow Zulus but also with the traditional left – the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the SA Communist Party, most of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), some of the ANC Women’s League and some provincial premiers.

Mbeki can rival neither Zuma’s popular base nor his vocal grassroots support. The President’s strongest weapon is the inexorable build-up of the state prosecutor’s case against Zuma. The Scorpions were looking for more such evidence. Among the 21 premises they raided in a coordinated early-morning operation were Zuma’s old offices in the Union Buildings in Pretoria and at the Tuynhuys in Cape Town, his traditional homestead in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), and the offices of his lawyer, Michael Hulley, and his legal advisor, Julie Mahomed (who drew up the ‘revolving loan’ agreement between Zuma and business advisor Schabir Shaik). Hulley and Mahomed are to challenge the Scorpions’ confiscation of documents from their premises, arguing that it undermined client confidentiality.

Searched by the Scorpions

On 16 August, Cosatu’s Central Committee called on Mbeki to stop the legal case against Zuma for corruption and reinstate him as deputy president. Cosatu General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi later claimed the raids were a direct response to its statement and termed them a ‘brutal persecution’. In fact, the Scorpions had secured search warrants from the Pretoria High Court a week earlier. Cosatu’s stance contradicted an earlier statement from its National Executive Committee calling for Zuma to have his day in court. Mbeki argues that dropping the charges would be an unconstitutional interference with the judiciary; this may go down well with the media and professionals, but many trades unionists see the case as a political stitch-up.

Zuma’s trial will unveil hard-to-explain details of his dealings with his convicted financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, and the French arms manufacturer Thalès, as well as apparent inconsistencies in his tax returns and statements to Parliament. The demand to drop the charges seems like an acknowledgement that he might lose, badly. ANCYL predicts that the trial will not be fair because the still predominantly white judiciary is ‘untransformed’. SACP leader Blade Nzimande says a fair trial is impossible because Zuma has already been tried by the media.

Cosatu promises mass action. A statement from its leadership said: ‘The political persecution of Jacob Zuma risks plunging our new democracy into turmoil... it has already begun to divide our movement. This may be a self-fulfilling prophecy: Zuma’s replacement as Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo- Ngcuka (who is also Zulu), was booed off the stage when she tried to address a rally in KZN, much to the embarrassment of the provincial ANC. The South African Broadcasting Corporation disgraced itself by reporting the rally without mentioning what had happened to her. For Mbeki, this row was not a huge problem; part of a deputy president’s job is to take flak aimed at the president. If she is vindicated, Mbeki could claim to have promoted a good woman at the expense of a corrupt man. Meanwhile Mlambo- Ngcuka has been trying to appease the party’s left-wingers, by remarking that land reform is moving too slowly and could learn from Zimbabwe. The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA, AC Vol 46 No 15) and the liberal press were outraged; some ANC supporters passed it off as a joke.

For Mbeki and Ngcuka and the rest of the ANC leadership, the main question is the power of the Zuma leftist alliance. With 22 affiliate organisations and 1.7 million members, Cosatu’s political muscle is taken seriously by ANC leaders. Cosatu has lost more than 250,000 members in the past five years, partly because of worsening unemployment; it increasingly represents a labour aristocracy lacking in clear political direction. Its confusion on the Zuma issue illustrates that.

Some leftists had dreamed that a Zuma presidency might follow Mbeki’s. Yet Zuma is no leftist (indeed, he seems to have no particular ideology) and now some Cosatu militants argue that he merely attended rallies, without ever criticising the government’s neo-liberal economic policy, called Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), launched against union opposition in 1996.

In fact, the left is divided over Zuma’s travails: leftists may criticise the ‘old South Africa’ judiciary and media but few would be prepared to stick with Zuma if he is convicted. That applies to many of his other allies. For now, though, the Zuma cause has given a new focus to the anti-Mbeki wing of the ANC organisations and their trades-union affiliates.

With acknowledgement to the Africa Confidential.